Presenter Eddie Mair reveals he was attacked

BBC Radio 4 PM presenter Eddie Mair has revealed he was assaulted in London last year, but was too ashamed to report it to the police.

Writing in The Sunday Times today, he says he has spoken out following the recent attack of Michael McIntyre by muggers with knives.

Eddie jokes in the piece that the only time he’d previously been a victim of crime was missing out on a radio award. He says: “If you’d asked me six months ago whether I had personally suffered a crime, I would have said no. Well, I was robbed of a Sony radio award once, but you have to accept the judges’ decision. Apart from that I considered myself fortunate to reach 52 without becoming part of the statistics. Then, in the space of a month, I was attacked twice.”

He goes onto describe being rounded on by a group of youths on bikes just before Christmas while waiting for a bus. He filmed them on his mobile phone, before receiving several blows to the head as he paid the driver.

Eddie writes: “I told no one, least of all the police. Not my family or friends. Not work colleagues. I felt shame. I felt I may have been in some way responsible for what happened. Did I goad the little bastards with my video recording?”

The presenter says his head hurt for days and a large bruise appeared. He finally reported the assault to police in February, but his video footage was unable to identify his attackers – and CCTV footage from the scene had been deleted because of the time delay.

Eddie’s used to the article to urge victims to come forward and report crimes.